Social Media Content Optimization Best Practices

Is your business on social media? If it is not, you are missing a lot from the benefits of social media marketing. You’ve got to optimize your content for social media if you want to remain relevant in online business. If you want to supercharge your online engagement, content is key. By taking deliberate steps to adorn your content with the right keywords, tags, titles, links and images, it can help you target the right customers, get leads and even sales. An effectively distributed and optimized content helps create a direct line to customers who are actively searching for products/services using the keywords the content is optimized with. When your content is optimized for social media, it helps to drive engagement and meaningful interactions. After all, social media optimization is all about making everything we post on our social platforms as engaging and as fruitful as possible with conversions as the end result.
These here are some of the best practices your business needs to optimize your social platforms for better results.

Streamline Your Strategy

To market successfully on social media, the strategy you adopt is vital. This strategy must be streamlined well enough to enable you establish a clear, regular and consistent posting schedule. Meaning, as far as your audience is concerned, they can be rest assured that you’ll always be there for them. This translates to reliability and dependability which somehow helps to build trust and guarantees engagement. So, if your posting schedule drives engagement satisfactorily, it is best to stick with it so as not to disappointment your audience who keeps coming back for more of your content.

Optimize Your Accounts

This is a given. Optimized social media accounts leave no one in doubt even with a very brief interaction what your business is all about. For this reason, you must be sure that all your social media accounts/profiles align with your business message, brand image goals and ethos. You can always guarantee and maintain this posture through regular and consistent content audits. When you habitually use consistent visuals, logos, tones of voice and marketing messaging in your social media accounts, your engagement is better enhanced.

Make Your Content Searchable

Unsearchable content cannot be engaging. Because search is a major feature of most social media platforms, making your content searchable helps engagement. Diligent optimization helps that process. Most prospects search on the social platforms themselves and they find products through the right keywords. Even from major search engines like Google, prospects can search for and find social pages themselves. Marketers do take advantage of that by embedding appropriate search-friendly keywords and hashtags (but with utmost caution), in their published social media content. If keywords are excessively used, you could be guilty of keywords stuffing and search engines’ algorithms can penalize your content for that.

Last Line

To compete favorably online, businesses should focus on content optimization. Content is king in online marketing. For this reason, marketers must not just post content for posting sake. Any content worth posting must be high in quality, informative and educating enough to attract engagement. Marketers must therefore ensure they consistently write content in such a way that it engages their target personas. Of course, to engage your target personas, your content has to first reach them. An optimized content serves that purpose better. 

How to Effectively Market on LinkedIn Social Media Platform

LinkedIn is a very effective social media platform for sharing valuable content, interacting with business peers, building thought leadership, and winning over new clients/customers. When it comes to B2B marketing space, LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social media platforms there is. Individual marketers thrive well on LinkedIn as well if they have the right connections. The platform is particularly popular with young business executives who belong to a generation that now dominates the workforce. They in addition dominate social media as well. That is where they market and can be effectively marketed to with the right content.

Below are some tested strategies you can effectively use to market on LinkedIn social media platform.

Publish Only Relevant Content

LinkedIn marketing entails the constant engagement with the contents of others while at the same time posting your own content as well. The content you publish on LinkedIn must have quality and be relevant to make that happen. This is the type of content you can craft and package in standard posts, images, graphics, videos, and on LinkedIn articles. For best results, you must be sure to cover a variety of topics that are relevant to your audience. You must in addition make quick responses to all questions/comments in the Comments section of the platform.

Optimize Your Business Profile

An optimized profile is what easily gets you noticed in LinkedIn search results. LinkedIn has a search function which works just as search engines. If you optimize your profile well enough, you can benefit from the results of this search function. Here is how! If a LinkedIn user searches for your type of business as listed in your profile, LinkedIn directs them to the page(s) that profiles the most relevant information and has the closest degree of connections to what they are searching for. Your optimized profile can always take advantage of that. Therefore, you can rely on LinkedIn SEO to optimize your page for search results. That helps it to attract more Connections and expectedly, more leads, more customers and more sales.
 
Use only High Quality Photos

Common stock photos are not very useful for marketing on LinkedIn. What you need are high quality and professionally shot photos and images. Engaging your connections with great visual content is usually very effective in LinkedIn marketing. This requires eye-catching photos/imagery that speaks directly to your target audience. Basic stock images are incapable of doing that effectively. Experienced marketers recommend using professional photos and/or custom graphics that bear great relevance to your brand/business. These are the kind of photos/images that can help you to stand out from the crowd and be noticed on LinkedIn platform.

Get Personal in your Marketing Messages

Personalized content usually resonates better with a marketing audience. For this reason, you must find convincing ways to tell your personal stories in your marketing content. Common stories which your audience may have heard of before are not helpful here. You can go really personal in your posts by sharing stories, updates, milestones, insights, achievements, challenges, interviews, and much more. This is the kind of content that can get people interested in your person. Such content helps you to build trust with your readers. Of course, you are no doubt aware that people are more likely to do business with someone they really know and trust. For this reason, if you are personable and authentic enough in your marketing activities, your messages will resonate better with your audience.

Ask Your Peers for Recommendations

Recommendations from business peers can be very effective in LinkedIn marketing. Some of such recommendations can even be like referrals from persons who know you and your business well or from people you’ve done business with in the past. They could even have similar effects as direct reviews on your business profile. Therefore, asking your peers and even previous customers to provide you with Recommendations on LinkedIn is a smart marketing idea on the platform.  

Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

Do you have a social media marketing strategy for your small business? If not, why not? The right time to start is today. You are no doubt aware that at the moment, social media clearly presents countless opportunities for potential and existing customers to engage with your business. It is a veritable environment for these customers to read blogs and marketing content, ask questions, make suggestions, share content of their own and much more. If your small business is presently not on social media, you are missing out of the many social media benefits that can help your business to grow. If you want to reach more customers and boost online authority for your small business, just get it on social media. Social media has become a very powerful tool for helping small businesses reach more customers and do more business online. What matters most in social media marketing is to post the right content for the right audience at the right time to nurture engagement, drive clicks, and attract customers.

Find below a few strategies that have proved effective for many small businesses marketing across some of the most popular social platforms.

Publish Only Relevant Content

In online marketing, content is king. It is more so on social media. While engaging with others’ content on social media, it is advisable that you should also be posting your own content on a regular basis. This content should be packaged into standard posts, images, videos, graphics and blogs. Your content will be effective if you ensure it covers such topics that are relevant to your audience and at the same time respond promptly to all questions/comments in the Comments section of the social media platform.

Diversify Your Content

In content marketing, diversity breeds more curiosity. On social media, questions, images, graphics and videos appear to be more engaging than other types of content. Mixing these content types and determining which works best on your type of audience is the way to go. In some popular platforms like Facebook, you have an added advantage of the valuable insights the platform provides. It has tools that help its users with some insights on how often other users are interacting with which content. With the benefit of these insights, marketers can take deliberate steps to craft and post more of the content people appear to be interested in.

Use Videos to Increase Organic Reach

High quality videos as content types on social media help to increase organic reach. Google reports indicate that video content represents over 74% of all online traffic. On Facebook in particular, it is one of the leading drivers of organic reach. If the videos are short, sharp, and concise and quickly answer questions and help solve users’ problems, they attract good organic traffic to your business website.

Market with Facebook Live Videos

Marketers can rely on Facebook Live videos to increase organic reach and boost engagement for their businesses. This is because Facebook users spend more time, in fact about three times as much time watching FB Live videos compared to other types of videos. These videos give marketers the all-important opportunity to directly interact with their followers in real time, answer questions, and make product recommendations to them.

Utilize LinkedIn Search Function

If tactically engaged, LinkedIn is a great platform for sharing valuable content, interacting with customers and potential customers and winning over new customers. LinkedIn’s search function works just like a real search engine. When users are searching on the platform for any particular type of business, LinkedIn helps to direct such searchers to the page that profiles the most relevant information and has the closest degree of connections to what they are searching for. Smart marketers can thus effectively use LinkedIn SEO to optimize their pages for search and to attract more Connections to their businesses.

Take Advantage of Instagram Marketing

Instagram appears to be the most popular social media platform with Millennials, that is persons now 35 and below. For smart marketers, that is a very vital demographic info. This group of people are now the largest generation presently in the workforce and they make up the majority of users on social media. Depending on the type of products you are marketing, you can deliberately target this group with marketing messages directly to where they can be found on social media.
 
Use Hashtags Tactically

Smart marketers particularly on Instagram can tactically use hashtags to maximize organic reach for their businesses on the platform. Once the hashtags are related to the brands and products, they do nicely. This is more so when you can effectively take advantage of the hashtags your direct competitors are using.

Use Instagram Stories Wisely

On most social media platforms, the main goal is to get users to interact more with your content. This is with the ultimate aim of getting them to reach out and do business with you. One great feature called Instagram Stories comes in very handy here. Instagram Stories allow you to post polls, questions, gifs, and much more to get people to engage and respond to your content. Instagram Stories are also great to give you more insights into what your audience is interested in and what questions they are asking. You can take advantage of these insights, to better market to them.

Market with Only High Quality Photos

What this means is that you must avoid stock photos at all cost particularly on Instagram. What is very important on social media is to be sure you can effectively engage your followers visually. To be able to do this, you need eye-catching photos/imagery that speaks directly to your target audience. If you can avoid common stock images, you’ll do nicely by using high quality professional photos and/or custom graphics that give your audience vivid images of your brand/products. That helps to get the brand/products noticed even amidst stiff competition.

Engage in YouTube Marketing

YouTube may not be a true social media platform in the real sense of it, but it does very nicely in video marketing which is its main specialty. In addition, YouTube has an organic search function that allows users to find videos on topics/products they are interested in. It is also very easy to simply publish your marketing video content on YouTube and then share it widely on the most popular social media channels. 

Market with Your Personal Stories

Getting personal on social media is a good marketing strategy. It is futile to regularly bore your audience with common stories which many of them may have heard before anyway. Getting personal with your own stories usually gives the best touch. You can do this by deliberating sharing personal stories, milestones, favorite anecdotes, quotations, updates, insights, achievements, interviews, and much more. That helps to build trust with your audience better. Trust is hugely important because most people are more likely to do business with people they trust. For this reason, if others perceive you as personable and authentic, they will do more business with you.

Use Paid Social Media Advertising, PPC

For marketers who have the budget for it, Pay-per-Click, PPC is one great option to generate better quality traffic and more marketing results faster. Marketers who are smart enough to supplement their organic traffic efforts with paid advertising; it helps them to establish a more holistic marketing strategy for their business. With PPC, you can effectively run paid ads on social media to attract clicks and leads to your business. 

Take Advantage of Facebook Ads

If your marketing budget can accommodate it, you can take advantage of Facebook ads to promote your business. Facebook ads are data-driven and it takes quite some marketing skills to get good results. These skills require that you have a working knowledge and understanding of who your audience is and what they are interested in. That knowledge and understanding enables you to set your ads targeting to reach the right audience with the right type of content. That helps to enhance the effectiveness of the ads. If you take advantage of Facebook insights and analytics, you can better segment your marketing activities for best results.

6 Ways Social Media can Benefit your Small Business

For most small business owners, social media clearly presents countless opportunities for potential and existing customers to engage with their businesses. It is a veritable environment for these customers to read blog and marketing content, ask questions, make suggestions, share content of their own and much more. In fact, some surveys suggest that over 70% of small businesses greatly depend on social media as part of their overall marketing strategy. If your small business is presently not on social media, you are missing a lot. Take quick steps to invest in social media marketing if you want to reach more customers and boost online authority for your small business.

These here are 6 ways your small business can greatly benefit from social media marketing.

1. Build Brand Authority

When your business has brand authority, it enhances its online visibility. That translates to good traffic, more leads, customers and sales. If you market your business on social media, you can quickly establish thought leadership through showcasing your expertise, sharing valuable content, and constantly engaging and interacting with your followers. Doing so effectively helps to stand your business out among its peers. It confers the business with brand leadership and authority which help it to win the trust of potential customers and customers alike.

2. Attract New Customers

For many small businesses more customers simply means more business. If you market your business on social media, it greatly increases your chances of acquiring new customers. When your social media marketing strategy is right and effective, the business easily attracts new customers organically and/or through paid efforts. That translates to more customers, more business, more sales and more revenues.

3. Boost Brand Awareness

If you are desirous to quickly build brand awareness for your business, just get it on social media. These days, nearly everyone is on social media doing one thing or another. That is what makes social media one great place to boost your brand awareness. Social media presents an array of business opportunities and tools business owners can take advantage of to reach a wider audience and build brand awareness. Many social media platforms help businesses to get in front of a wide array of potential customers through brand awareness.

4. Regularly Engage Your Followers

With social media, businesses can easily engage their new and existing followers for marketing purposes. Through these regular engagements, businesses can build brand loyalty and grow their referral networks exponentially. These engagements are also great to attract new customers and grow your business. You can further boost these engagements by answering business questions directly and regularly providing valuable content to your followers on social media.

5. Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, SEO

Some online marketing studies indicate that there is a significant correlation between improved social media signals and increased search engine rankings. Every business owner wants traffic to their business websites right? A good SEO helps to enhance that, particularly the highly valuable organic traffic. If you implement a good SEO in your social media marketing, it impacts your marketing activities particularly in terms of improving your Search Engine rankings and organic traffic.

6. Retain Existing Customers

Smart business owners do not just seek new customers only. They also take deliberate steps to retain existing customers. With deliberate efforts at regularly engaging your existing customers on social media, it enhances their continued loyalty to your brand. Enhanced customer loyalty usually translates to better business and more sales. It also helps to grow your referral networks for the benefit of the business. Your existing customers must have had some good reasons for becoming your customers in the first instance. You can continue to nurture these reasons with more engagements through direct answers to their business inquiries and concerns, providing them valuable marketing content and much more on social media.

Hot Tips to Build Your Brand Through Social Media Networks

Small business owners can no longer afford to ignore social media networks in their marketing activities. This is not just because of the huge popularity of many social networks but also because of the relative ease of marketing on the networks. Many small business owners have a preference for hugely popular micro-blogging sites such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. For this reason, social media is fast becoming the dominant advertising platform online. It is greatly cost-effective when compared to traditional formats of advertising such as TV, newspapers, magazines and radio among others. As preferred ads media, social networks enable small businesses to easily reach their target audiences more effectively through a variety of channels. This is why small business owners can depend on them to build their brands fairly quickly online.

Here are some hot tips/techniques to get the best marketing results from social media networks.

Social Media Management, SMM: SMM requires an integrated approach that takes into account various aspects of strategic internet marketing. This includes planning, measurement, and strategy implementation. If you accurately measure your marketing results quantitatively, you have a great opportunity to understand exactly where you are in your efforts to reach your target audience. This measurement data must include everything from the number of people who have visited your blog, to the number who are now your friends/followers on your social media handles. You can also measure and obtain metrics data on the time spent on each social media platform by your target audience. Next is to measure the actual engagement on the platforms. From the engagement data, you get to know the number of people who actually click on your ads, respond to your promotional messages, and share your content. This information is very valuable for marketing purposes as most marketers very well know. Smart small business owners rely on this data to formulate marketing plans, develop marketing strategies and launch marketing campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization, SEO Strategy: For effective marketing purposes, SEO is not expected to be a one-time process. It is usually a continuous and an ongoing effort with the sole aim of achieving higher rankings on major search engines. Higher ranking on SERPs of search engines translates to higher organic traffic, leads, customers and sales. A good SEO strategy involves using the right keywords in your content, creating backlinks to your website, and generating high amount of traffic to the site. When your SEO is good enough, it helps your business to maintain a positive brand image while greatly increasing its brand awareness on the internet.

Strategic Internet Marketing: This focuses on SEO, paid Search Engine Optimization, PPC, pay-per-click, networking, viral, and other creative strategies. You can strategically integrate them all to get good results. A good SEO helps your business with organic exposure and you can easily incorporate it into your social network marketing plan/strategy. That way, you can easily use social networks to build your brand by directly engaging your target audience.

Combine SMM and Traditional Advertising Methods: Many small businesses successfully combine traditional media marketing with SMM in their efforts to quickly build their brands and grow their businesses. Both are complimentary to each other. It is not smart to rest one for the other if your marketing budget can accommodate both. If the budget cannot, it is advisable to put more of your scarce resources on SMM that is hugely cost-effective. This is a good survival strategy in the hugely suffocating ads marketing space.

Get Reliable Metrics/Analytics Data: To do this effectively it is recommended you use Google Analytics to measure the performance of your marketing campaigns. There are free easy-to-use Google Analytics tools available online and paid ones as well if you are desirous to have a more comprehensive report. Business owners rely on analytics data to have insights into how users are interacting with the content on their websites, search and user behaviors, and demographics. This helps them to have a clear understanding of their audience and the activities they engage in and general audience behavior. Armed with such vital information, they can plan better and create more effective social media marketing campaigns for their businesses.

User tip: For best results from Google Analytics, just import the data, use the filters and options available, and generate a custom dashboard with detailed reports. That way, you can easily return to it and get updated info from it as often as you want.